It does not matter what the hardware can do. If people are still running XP (which 45-50% of the PC's do), you can only run DX9.
According to the steam statistics, gamers seem to be mostly running WIndows 7 (70%), with 10+% running Vista too. It also shows that most already are equipped for DX10, if not DX11.
XP still has a strong following in the companies, because you don't need more to run the latest word, excel, or even for your company server. As I said, why change when it's working?
Originally posted by Rasputin If you claim, that DX11 automatically will scale down to DX9, then you have to give me a link, because I never heard about that.
You are right here, DX11 does NOT "automatically" scale down to DX9 on DX9 hardware. You have to implement separate rendering paths in your software. My guess is that people who think it's automatically downscaling are using pre-made engines which actually do the job.
The question here is why GW2 uses DX9 instead of DX11.
The answer to this question is the same as to a majority of games: It is simply because you will not get a big enough market, because too many machines (whether hardware or software) still do not support the newer versions.
You can close your eyes to this and find one statistics after another showing differently, but this IS the explanation, whether you want to see it or not.
It does not matter what the hardware can do. If people are still running XP (which 45-50% of the PC's do), you can only run DX9.
According to the steam statistics, gamers seem to be mostly running WIndows 7 (70%), with 10+% running Vista too. It also shows that most already are equipped for DX10, if not DX11.
XP still has a strong following in the companies, because you don't need more to run the latest word, excel, or even for your company server. As I said, why change when it's working?
Originally posted by Rasputin If you claim, that DX11 automatically will scale down to DX9, then you have to give me a link, because I never heard about that.
You are right here, DX11 does NOT "automatically" scale down to DX9 on DX9 hardware. You have to implement separate rendering paths in your software. My guess is that people who think it's automatically downscaling are using pre-made engines which actually do the job.
Hehe it has nothing to do with automatically downscaling or to do with pre-made engines, its about Feature Levels an API feature which came into effect with DirectX 11, so you can have a lower feature level with a higher DirectX device, so for instance you can run feature level 9 to create a D3D11 device, this allows you to run the DirectX 9 feature set on DirectX 9 hardware with the DirectX 11 runtime, this still requires windows 7/Vista depending if you are using a D3D10 device or a D3D11 device.
You only need a different render path if you are specifically supporting D3D9 runtime which is pre windows vista, then it becomes the same process as if you are building a multi platform renderer for DirectX and OpenGL for instance.
Research people! Research before your hasty into saying something that is wrong ( Clicky below )
If you use a DX11 feature only (like someone mentioned renderorder independent transparency), there is no way you can downscale this to DX9, because it does not exist on the latter version.
And I just told you, unless its a feature that is specific to hardware, like hardware tessellation, the runtime handles both systems pretty transparently, for unsupported features you still need switches because obviously you cannot use features that are hardware specific on a hardware that does not have them,
Why would you use DX11 if you are not going to use its features? Then you may as well stay in DX9 and get the maximum audience.
And I just told you, unless its a feature that is specific to hardware, like hardware tessellation, the runtime handles both systems pretty transparently, for unsupported features you still need switches because obviously you cannot use features that are hardware specific on a hardware that does not have them,
Why would you use DX11 if you are not going to use its features? Then you may as well stay in DX9 and get the maximum audience.
But thats the thing you can still provide the DX11 features if the hardware supports it, but a company will never do that, as a business there is no reason to invest time and money into getting a subset of features into your engine if you can get away with just supporting the bottom end, unless you are in the business of selling game engines ( Epic, Crytek, etc... ).
As a consumer this annoys me, why shouldnt I have a higher feature set with higher end hardware? This is the same thing when it comes to Console/PC releases, you build your engine, put all the bells and whistles that can run on a high end PC, you showcase it, everyone is wowed by it, go back into the end of production and the features are cut to cater to the lowest common denominator, because you cannot have a different game on PC than on console you are shafted, now the destruction system is dumbed down or whatever cause consoles cannot handle your physics engine.
It also perpetuates the cycle of, lets just not support DX11 hardware. This is my view as a consumer, I know exactly why a business wont and has no need to pump extra money into a product unless they have to.
If you use a DX11 feature only (like someone mentioned renderorder independent transparency), there is no way you can downscale this to DX9, because it does not exist on the latter version.
I am not gonna go into this discussion again, but this is a detail of implementation and has nothing to do with using the same COM object and dropping the directx 9 runtime, furthermore you would never use dx11 order independent transparency, you would be using a deffered renderer which means your pipeline is going to be handling transparency in a whole different way whether its DX9 or DX11.
And I just told you, unless its a feature that is specific to hardware, like hardware tessellation, the runtime handles both systems pretty transparently, for unsupported features you still need switches because obviously you cannot use features that are hardware specific on a hardware that does not have them,
Why would you use DX11 if you are not going to use its features? Then you may as well stay in DX9 and get the maximum audience.
But thats the thing you can still provide the DX11 features if the hardware supports it, but a company will never do that, as a business there is no reason to invest time and money into getting a subset of features into your engine if you can get away with just supporting the bottom end, unless you are in the business of selling game engines ( Epic, Crytek, etc... ).
As a consumer this annoys me, why shouldnt I have a higher feature set with higher end hardware? This is the same thing when it comes to Console/PC releases, you build your engine, put all the bells and whistles that can run on a high end PC, you showcase it, everyone is wowed by it, go back into the end of production and the features are cut to cater to the lowest common denominator, because you cannot have a different game on PC than on console you are shafted, now the destruction system is dumbed down or whatever cause consoles cannot handle your physics engine.
It also perpetuates the cycle of, lets just not support DX11 hardware. This is my view as a consumer, I know exactly why a business wont and has no need to pump extra money into a product unless they have to.
If you use a DX11 feature only (like someone mentioned renderorder independent transparency), there is no way you can downscale this to DX9, because it does not exist on the latter version.
I am not gonna go into this discussion again, but this is a detail of implementation and has nothing to do with using the same COM object and dropping the directx 9 runtime, furthermore you would never use dx11 order independent transparency, you would be using a deffered renderer which means your pipeline is going to be handling transparency in a whole different way whether its DX9 or DX11.
Tsssk, do we really need to go over this again?? How the HELL do you plan to install DX11 on an XP machine?
Completely irrelevant to my point. Use ANY DX10+ exclusive feature, and you run into this problem. Come on, please address the core of my argument instead of wandering off into meaningless details.
And I just told you, unless its a feature that is specific to hardware, like hardware tessellation, the runtime handles both systems pretty transparently, for unsupported features you still need switches because obviously you cannot use features that are hardware specific on a hardware that does not have them,
Why would you use DX11 if you are not going to use its features? Then you may as well stay in DX9 and get the maximum audience.
But thats the thing you can still provide the DX11 features if the hardware supports it, but a company will never do that, as a business there is no reason to invest time and money into getting a subset of features into your engine if you can get away with just supporting the bottom end, unless you are in the business of selling game engines ( Epic, Crytek, etc... ).
As a consumer this annoys me, why shouldnt I have a higher feature set with higher end hardware? This is the same thing when it comes to Console/PC releases, you build your engine, put all the bells and whistles that can run on a high end PC, you showcase it, everyone is wowed by it, go back into the end of production and the features are cut to cater to the lowest common denominator, because you cannot have a different game on PC than on console you are shafted, now the destruction system is dumbed down or whatever cause consoles cannot handle your physics engine.
It also perpetuates the cycle of, lets just not support DX11 hardware. This is my view as a consumer, I know exactly why a business wont and has no need to pump extra money into a product unless they have to.
If you use a DX11 feature only (like someone mentioned renderorder independent transparency), there is no way you can downscale this to DX9, because it does not exist on the latter version.
I am not gonna go into this discussion again, but this is a detail of implementation and has nothing to do with using the same COM object and dropping the directx 9 runtime, furthermore you would never use dx11 order independent transparency, you would be using a deffered renderer which means your pipeline is going to be handling transparency in a whole different way whether its DX9 or DX11.
Tsssk, do we really need to go over this again?? How the HELL do you plan to install DX11 on an XP machine?
Completely irrelevant to my point. Use ANY DX10+ exclusive feature, and you run into this problem. Come on, please address the core of my argument instead of wandering off into meaningless details.
hmm? Go back and read my posts please I have never said you can run DX11 on XP, I actually specifically said you cant, and my proposition is only valid if you only target Win7 users. As a consumer I couldnt give two s***s that someone doesnt have DirectX11 hardware or that they are running a 10 year old OS. Honestly this should answer your question. I dont plan to install DX11 on anyones machine its their problem.
How are those meaningless details I specifically answered your question, again please go back and read through my discussion with Korrigan it already answers your question, you will need a separate implementation if you dabble into any feature that is hardware dependent anything runtime only dependent is handled transparently between DX9 and DX11 if you are running feature level 9. Because DX11/10 exposes a feature that takes advantage of a hardware implementation doesnt mean that is the only way to implement it, its a detail of implementation, compute shaders ( what is used in the case you are talking about order independent transparency ) is not implemented just for that, it is just a low level system that can be used for all kinds of computing if you decide to take advantage of a hardware specification to perform ANY task then you need to take into account that it might not be there for hardware that does not implement it.
And I just told you, unless its a feature that is specific to hardware, like hardware tessellation, the runtime handles both systems pretty transparently, for unsupported features you still need switches because obviously you cannot use features that are hardware specific on a hardware that does not have them,
Why would you use DX11 if you are not going to use its features? Then you may as well stay in DX9 and get the maximum audience.
But thats the thing you can still provide the DX11 features if the hardware supports it, but a company will never do that, as a business there is no reason to invest time and money into getting a subset of features into your engine if you can get away with just supporting the bottom end, unless you are in the business of selling game engines ( Epic, Crytek, etc... ).
As a consumer this annoys me, why shouldnt I have a higher feature set with higher end hardware? This is the same thing when it comes to Console/PC releases, you build your engine, put all the bells and whistles that can run on a high end PC, you showcase it, everyone is wowed by it, go back into the end of production and the features are cut to cater to the lowest common denominator, because you cannot have a different game on PC than on console you are shafted, now the destruction system is dumbed down or whatever cause consoles cannot handle your physics engine.
It also perpetuates the cycle of, lets just not support DX11 hardware. This is my view as a consumer, I know exactly why a business wont and has no need to pump extra money into a product unless they have to.
If you use a DX11 feature only (like someone mentioned renderorder independent transparency), there is no way you can downscale this to DX9, because it does not exist on the latter version.
I am not gonna go into this discussion again, but this is a detail of implementation and has nothing to do with using the same COM object and dropping the directx 9 runtime, furthermore you would never use dx11 order independent transparency, you would be using a deffered renderer which means your pipeline is going to be handling transparency in a whole different way whether its DX9 or DX11.
Tsssk, do we really need to go over this again?? How the HELL do you plan to install DX11 on an XP machine?
Completely irrelevant to my point. Use ANY DX10+ exclusive feature, and you run into this problem. Come on, please address the core of my argument instead of wandering off into meaningless details.
hmm? Go back and read my posts please I have never said you can run DX11 on XP, I actually specifically said you cant, and my proposition is only valid if you only target Win7 users. As a consumer I couldnt give two s***s that someone doesnt have DirectX11 hardware or that they are running a 10 year old OS. Honestly this should answer your question. I dont plan to install DX11 on anyones machine its their problem.
How are those meaningless details I specifically answered your question, again please go back and read through my discussion with Korrigan it already answers your question, you will need a separate implementation if you dabble into any feature that is hardware dependent anything runtime only dependent is handled transparently between DX9 and DX11 if you are running feature level 9. Because DX11/10 exposes a feature that takes advantage of a hardware implementation doesnt mean that is the only way to implement it, its a detail of implementation, compute shaders ( what is used in the case you are talking about order independent transparency ) is not implemented just for that, it is just a low level system that can be used for all kinds of computing if you decide to take advantage of a hardware specification to perform ANY task then you need to take into account that it might not be there for hardware that does not implement it.
[new color codes]
But isn't your argumentation irrelevant to the topic then? Because 45-50% of all PCs do still have XP installed, and no company in their right mind (except it is a very specific business model, like Crysis') would cut out that big a potential audience. And since you cannot install DX11 on these machines, then you are obliged to make a dedicated DX9 version as well, and then the entire backwards compatibility and scaling and whatever will be rendered completely irrelevant.
It is irrelevant what DX11 functionality I use as an example. I picked one, just for argument's sake, it could have been any (I don't develop for DX11, so I don't know the new features). What you do then is proceed on a long explanation why one would not get in problems with that exact functionality, which was completely beside the point. Any use of a dedicated DX11 functionality would create problems if the API has to scale back to DX9.
And if you do not use any dedicated DX11 functionality, then there is little point, as you will dump a large potential audience.
And I just told you, unless its a feature that is specific to hardware, like hardware tessellation, the runtime handles both systems pretty transparently, for unsupported features you still need switches because obviously you cannot use features that are hardware specific on a hardware that does not have them,
Why would you use DX11 if you are not going to use its features? Then you may as well stay in DX9 and get the maximum audience.
But thats the thing you can still provide the DX11 features if the hardware supports it, but a company will never do that, as a business there is no reason to invest time and money into getting a subset of features into your engine if you can get away with just supporting the bottom end, unless you are in the business of selling game engines ( Epic, Crytek, etc... ).
As a consumer this annoys me, why shouldnt I have a higher feature set with higher end hardware? This is the same thing when it comes to Console/PC releases, you build your engine, put all the bells and whistles that can run on a high end PC, you showcase it, everyone is wowed by it, go back into the end of production and the features are cut to cater to the lowest common denominator, because you cannot have a different game on PC than on console you are shafted, now the destruction system is dumbed down or whatever cause consoles cannot handle your physics engine.
It also perpetuates the cycle of, lets just not support DX11 hardware. This is my view as a consumer, I know exactly why a business wont and has no need to pump extra money into a product unless they have to.
If you use a DX11 feature only (like someone mentioned renderorder independent transparency), there is no way you can downscale this to DX9, because it does not exist on the latter version.
I am not gonna go into this discussion again, but this is a detail of implementation and has nothing to do with using the same COM object and dropping the directx 9 runtime, furthermore you would never use dx11 order independent transparency, you would be using a deffered renderer which means your pipeline is going to be handling transparency in a whole different way whether its DX9 or DX11.
Tsssk, do we really need to go over this again?? How the HELL do you plan to install DX11 on an XP machine?
Completely irrelevant to my point. Use ANY DX10+ exclusive feature, and you run into this problem. Come on, please address the core of my argument instead of wandering off into meaningless details.
hmm? Go back and read my posts please I have never said you can run DX11 on XP, I actually specifically said you cant, and my proposition is only valid if you only target Win7 users. As a consumer I couldnt give two s***s that someone doesnt have DirectX11 hardware or that they are running a 10 year old OS. Honestly this should answer your question. I dont plan to install DX11 on anyones machine its their problem.
How are those meaningless details I specifically answered your question, again please go back and read through my discussion with Korrigan it already answers your question, you will need a separate implementation if you dabble into any feature that is hardware dependent anything runtime only dependent is handled transparently between DX9 and DX11 if you are running feature level 9. Because DX11/10 exposes a feature that takes advantage of a hardware implementation doesnt mean that is the only way to implement it, its a detail of implementation, compute shaders ( what is used in the case you are talking about order independent transparency ) is not implemented just for that, it is just a low level system that can be used for all kinds of computing if you decide to take advantage of a hardware specification to perform ANY task then you need to take into account that it might not be there for hardware that does not implement it.
[new color codes]
But isn't your argumentation irrelevant to the topic then? Because 45-50% of all PCs do still have XP installed, and no company in their right mind (except it is a very specific business model, like Crysis') would cut out that big a potential audience. And since you cannot install DX11 on these machines, then you are obliged to make a dedicated DX9 version as well, and then the entire backwards compatibility and scaling and whatever will be rendered completely irrelevant.
It is irrelevant what DX11 functionality I use as an example. I picked one, just for argument's sake, it could have been any (I don't develop for DX11, so I don't know the new features). What you do then is proceed on a long explanation why one would not get in problems with that exact functionality, which was completely beside the point. Any use of a dedicated DX11 functionality would create problems if the API has to scale back to DX9.
##That seems to be contradicting data, taking Steam surveys as an indicator ( and btw the DX10/11 capabilities listed on the steam hardware survey specifically say DX10/11 Systems (Vista/Win7 + DX10/11 GPU) ) Which means that the 41% DirectX 11 and the 37% DirectX 10 are actually Win7/ Windows Vista users so I dont know where you got the number that 45-50% of all PCs have XP installed, unless you mean ALL PCs in the world, but that would include Microsoft biggest market which are businesses, I dont think ANet cares about ALL PCs but rather, gamer PCs.
## I still dont get what you are trying to get at, that we shouldnt bother with DX11 and just have everything DX9? If you decide to support the directx 9 runtime then when you want to support a higher end feature you still need to implement it yourself, regardless of hardware support, not only that but the runtimes are so different that if you decide to support DirectX 11 for better performance ( if available ) it would be the equivalent of adding OpenGL support to your already DirectX renderer, so if ANet half way through the second expansion of GW2 has the opportunity to add something like Hardware tessellation to improve the graphical quality ( bear in mind this would still be UNSUPPORTED for DirectX 9 GPUs ), this will just be dropped cause adding another API to the engine is probably not gonna be sound business.
If you decide from the start to go DirectX 11, support feature level 9, then there is no difference from a technical point of view ( having a bigger target audience is a business decision ) you will implement exactly everything you would had you just gone with DirectX 9, the difference is your rendering pipeline is now scalable to the complete feature set, so if 2 years from now you decide that you want to support hardware tessellation accross the board for GPUs with feature level 11 then you wont need to write a whole rendering pipeline for what is essentially a new API.
You seem to think I am saying anyone NEEDS to do this, I simply pointed out that this is a possibility, and that it is possible to forfeit using the DirectX 9 runtime altogether for a much better scalable solution which is DirectX 11, granted you dont care about targetting a market that is using XP. You could for instance use the DirectX 11 runtime and NEVER EVER use any of the DirectX 10 or 11 features and still have some runtime benefits, you wouldnt be doing any more work than if you had use DirectX 9 to begin with, just the added benefit of scalability.
If Funcom can provide DX9 and DX11 support, flying by the seat of their pants with obvious budget issues, I have trouble believing that it would be development or cost prohibitive to provide DX9 and DX10 or DX11 support for GW2. Heck, LotRO and Aion, both now F2P, invested in some DX10+ support.
As others have pointed out, the GW2 options select for DX9, which sort of implies that at some point there will be an option to select another version. In TSW, I can either turn DX11 support on or off, why would this not be possible with GW2?
The technical details are really only if interest to people who work with the APIs.
It's not a question of how hard is it, or how expensive is it, MMOs with smaller teams and much smaller budgets can and have offered DX10 or DX11 support. I think most of us are just curious if the game will support DX10 or DX11 and what performance advantages that support might provide for those with appropriate hardware and what visual improvements are typically tageted when game's do support higher than DX9?
That's what I'd be interested in reading comments about from people who know what they are talking about and I think others would like to know as well.
gw2 sofar only has DX9 and will have dx10 but no dx11 and there is absolutely no reason not to have dx11 supported like TSW does it. everyone knows tesselation + other features look great and if i cant have that because some ppls till run on xp and shitty pcs then this is a horrible solution for GW2.
no matter how u twist or turn it. no dx 11 support is a slap in the face.
##That seems to be contradicting data, taking Steam surveys as an indicator ( and btw the DX10/11 capabilities listed on the steam hardware survey specifically say DX10/11 Systems (Vista/Win7 + DX10/11 GPU) ) Which means that the 41% DirectX 11 and the 37% DirectX 10 are actually Win7/ Windows Vista users so I dont know where you got the number that 45-50% of all PCs have XP installed, unless you mean ALL PCs in the world, but that would include Microsoft biggest market which are businesses, I dont think ANet cares about ALL PCs but rather, gamer PCs.
## I still dont get what you are trying to get at, that we shouldnt bother with DX11 and just have everything DX9? If you decide to support the directx 9 runtime then when you want to support a higher end feature you still need to implement it yourself, regardless of hardware support, not only that but the runtimes are so different that if you decide to support DirectX 11 for better performance ( if available ) it would be the equivalent of adding OpenGL support to your already DirectX renderer, so if ANet half way through the second expansion of GW2 has the opportunity to add something like Hardware tessellation to improve the graphical quality ( bear in mind this would still be UNSUPPORTED for DirectX 9 GPUs ), this will just be dropped cause adding another API to the engine is probably not gonna be sound business.
If you decide from the start to go DirectX 11, support feature level 9, then there is no difference from a technical point of view ( having a bigger target audience is a business decision ) you will implement exactly everything you would had you just gone with DirectX 9, the difference is your rendering pipeline is now scalable to the complete feature set, so if 2 years from now you decide that you want to support hardware tessellation accross the board for GPUs with feature level 11 then you wont need to write a whole rendering pipeline for what is essentially a new API.
You seem to think I am saying anyone NEEDS to do this, I simply pointed out that this is a possibility, and that it is possible to forfeit using the DirectX 9 runtime altogether for a much better scalable solution which is DirectX 11, granted you dont care about targetting a market that is using XP. You could for instance use the DirectX 11 runtime and NEVER EVER use any of the DirectX 10 or 11 features and still have some runtime benefits, you wouldnt be doing any more work than if you had use DirectX 9 to begin with, just the added benefit of scalability.
## Can you give me a reason then why everybody still supports DX9?
Even when a large number of current gamers can run DX10+, you still do not want to limit your potential audience. And in the potential audience 45-50% have XP installed. Yes, there will be business machines as well, but business machines also run VIsta/7, so who knows what the ratio is?
## The point is: You cannot get around making a dedicated DX9 version just because the new DX can scale back, if you cannot even install the new version on a large number of machines. That means, you do not get around the problem of limiting your potential audience.
This situation where we are still stuck at DX9 is Microsoft's own fault. They wanted to force people to upgrade to Vista by amongst other making DX10 only Vista. Since XP refused to die, this has backfired big time, because game developers cannot ignore the potential market. Many developers have then relied on the baseline DX9, because they could not get around it in any case, and because it is still able to make very impressive graphics, so it is still competitive (due mainly to Shaders, where version 3.0 gives alot of power).
If Microsoft had continued as usual, allowing new DX versions on XP, we would now see all games support DX11.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Originally posted by Thralia
gw2 sofar only has DX9 and will have dx10 but no dx11 and there is absolutely no reason not to have dx11 supported like TSW does it. everyone knows tesselation + other features look great and if i cant have that because some ppls till run on xp and shitty pcs then this is a horrible solution for GW2.
no matter how u twist or turn it. no dx 11 support is a slap in the face.
Have to agree here. The way GW2 looks is touted through all the art, presentation, and all that hard work, what better way to do it even more justice is to display everything in all it's glory. I'd be happy with an option built in at a later date to enable the DX11 features akin to LOTRO.
gw2 sofar only has DX9 and will have dx10 but no dx11 and there is absolutely no reason not to have dx11 supported like TSW does it. everyone knows tesselation + other features look great and if i cant have that because some ppls till run on xp and shitty pcs then this is a horrible solution for GW2.
no matter how u twist or turn it. no dx 11 support is a slap in the face.
Why do you care? Its not like you are playing guild wars 2.
Directx 11 doesn't really add anything worthwhile (something to cry about) to gaming. Not even skyrim uses directx 11 at least any of the features of it, it still uses directx9 mainly, so its not really a slap to the face except for people that don't really care about guild wars 2 in the first place and are just bored and trying to troll. Finally, maybe funcom should have spent more time improving the game animation, graphics, combat, skills instead of worry about directx11 a feature that mostt of its target audience wouldn't even care.
And btw, guild wars 2 at release will have directx 10.
Edit: even crysis 2 did bother with directx 11 at release and had to release it as a patch.
##That seems to be contradicting data, taking Steam surveys as an indicator ( and btw the DX10/11 capabilities listed on the steam hardware survey specifically say DX10/11 Systems (Vista/Win7 + DX10/11 GPU) ) Which means that the 41% DirectX 11 and the 37% DirectX 10 are actually Win7/ Windows Vista users so I dont know where you got the number that 45-50% of all PCs have XP installed, unless you mean ALL PCs in the world, but that would include Microsoft biggest market which are businesses, I dont think ANet cares about ALL PCs but rather, gamer PCs.
## I still dont get what you are trying to get at, that we shouldnt bother with DX11 and just have everything DX9? If you decide to support the directx 9 runtime then when you want to support a higher end feature you still need to implement it yourself, regardless of hardware support, not only that but the runtimes are so different that if you decide to support DirectX 11 for better performance ( if available ) it would be the equivalent of adding OpenGL support to your already DirectX renderer, so if ANet half way through the second expansion of GW2 has the opportunity to add something like Hardware tessellation to improve the graphical quality ( bear in mind this would still be UNSUPPORTED for DirectX 9 GPUs ), this will just be dropped cause adding another API to the engine is probably not gonna be sound business.
If you decide from the start to go DirectX 11, support feature level 9, then there is no difference from a technical point of view ( having a bigger target audience is a business decision ) you will implement exactly everything you would had you just gone with DirectX 9, the difference is your rendering pipeline is now scalable to the complete feature set, so if 2 years from now you decide that you want to support hardware tessellation accross the board for GPUs with feature level 11 then you wont need to write a whole rendering pipeline for what is essentially a new API.
You seem to think I am saying anyone NEEDS to do this, I simply pointed out that this is a possibility, and that it is possible to forfeit using the DirectX 9 runtime altogether for a much better scalable solution which is DirectX 11, granted you dont care about targetting a market that is using XP. You could for instance use the DirectX 11 runtime and NEVER EVER use any of the DirectX 10 or 11 features and still have some runtime benefits, you wouldnt be doing any more work than if you had use DirectX 9 to begin with, just the added benefit of scalability.
## Can you give me a reason then why everybody still supports DX9?
Even when a large number of current gamers can run DX10+, you still do not want to limit your potential audience. And in the potential audience 45-50% have XP installed. Yes, there will be business machines as well, but business machines also run VIsta/7, so who knows what the ratio is?
## The point is: You cannot get around making a dedicated DX9 version just because the new DX can scale back, if you cannot even install the new version on a large number of machines. That means, you do not get around the problem of limiting your potential audience.
Honestly what are you on about I gave you concrete numbers from the Steam hardware survey who has god knows how many million gamers, I would wager most of the PC gaming population has Steam installed on their machine, you pulled some number out of your ass and your telling me they need to support Business machines.
Where is this number coming from, its simply not true, your second point is also a business decision nothing to do with the discussion I was having which was related to the API,and again back to the Steam survey it shows there is a greater majority of gamers on DX10+ than there are on DX9, this is the reason they ANet also probably invested in DX10 because there is a larger market from Vista and up ( considering Win7 also supports DX10 ). The question was never to do with Scale down to DX9 it was always to do with Scale up I honestly cannot believe you are actually truly reading and understand what I am responding to you. On that note I think we have beaten this horse to death, lets just agree to disagree.
My point still stands as a consumer, I would rather pay to have high end tech than to pay to support the 16% of gamers ( Check Steam hardware survey on OS installed ) that still have not upgraded 10 years on, and having a worse gaming experience that I could have had if they supported the high end tech to begin with.
The reason ANet supports DX9 is not because of the API itself, its because of a business person that made the maths and came up with a cutoff point, and currently is more profitable for them to spend time on an older runtime than to let it go, once that cutoff point happens no one will support DX9 anymore it is not because they want everyone to have a better experience or a better game, its just about getting away with not having to invest in high end tech AND supporting a larger market.
This is not to say that you cant make amazing things with DX9, and that you cant make shit games with DX11 if you have shit programmers it doesnt matter if your DX9 or DX11 if you have no technical ability to take advantage of the hardware, but a company like ANet absolutely has the best people in the business, and we are sure missing out on a lot of bells and whistles that could have been there but are not, this goes for pretty much any big company, someone mentioned Skyrim, I bet you they have some pretty impressive tech inhouse that just hasnt been released because they dont have the time or the budget to make it market ready .
Why does it matter so much? Most of the hardware-demanding games out there (shooters) don't support dx11 either. Dx11 does not make a bad game better. (Not saying GW2 is a bad game, but Dx11 is no necessity to have today.)
Also, they (ANet) never said GW2 would support Dx11.
Why does it matter so much? Most of the hardware-demanding games out there (shooters) don't support dx11 either. Dx11 does not make a bad game better. (Not saying GW2 is a bad game, but Dx11 is no necessity to have today.)
Also, they (ANet) never said GW2 would support Dx11.
Was a question, curiosity I never said it matters...
gw2 sofar only has DX9 and will have dx10 but no dx11 and there is absolutely no reason not to have dx11 supported like TSW does it. everyone knows tesselation + other features look great and if i cant have that because some ppls till run on xp and shitty pcs then this is a horrible solution for GW2.
no matter how u twist or turn it. no dx 11 support is a slap in the face.
Do you think people care about DirectX 11 for its own sake? Or do people just want a game to run smoothly and look nice? Various versions of DirectX are only a means to that end, and not an end in themselves.
gw2 sofar only has DX9 and will have dx10 but no dx11 and there is absolutely no reason not to have dx11 supported like TSW does it. everyone knows tesselation + other features look great and if i cant have that because some ppls till run on xp and shitty pcs then this is a horrible solution for GW2.
no matter how u twist or turn it. no dx 11 support is a slap in the face.
Do you think people care about DirectX 11 for its own sake? Or do people just want a game to run smoothly and look nice? Various versions of DirectX are only a means to that end, and not an end in themselves.
The bottom line here is that no game ever releases with the BEST it can be, you would have to to go through hundreds of papers and research that comes out every year and it would take and infinitely long time to implement all these features, also people seem to think that there is only improvements to be made in graphics, hardware is now being used for much more than just polygon counts, AI, Physics ( procedural destruction and animations ) are all part of the game pipeline and while graphics are at a stage that its getting diminishing returns in comparison to the time put in developing these features.
There are still TONS of improvements to be made in other areas like animation, physics, AI, and so on, all of these can be implemented taking advantage of better hardware that allows more computations per second more efficiently.
And its the small details that really add to the whole immersion, like a few years ago when people started populating environments with plants and trees you started seeing static meshes everywhere and that added a lot to the immersion, nowadays you have things like Speedtree that allow up to every single leave to be physically simulated, with leaves falling off the tree when you hit it and animated grass that interacts with your character when you go through it, when you swing at a wall and you chip a bit of it, or when your character can dynamically grap onto anything in the geometry and climb up a wall or any other object.
These details by themselves are pretty insignificant but when you add them all together it truly adds to a great experience. New hardware and API give you tools that allow you to create and add all of these details much faster and more efficiently.
Comments
I dont care what kind of directX this game uses ,more considdered about if the game will bore the s...t out of me after the first 2 weeks.
The question here is why GW2 uses DX9 instead of DX11.
The answer to this question is the same as to a majority of games: It is simply because you will not get a big enough market, because too many machines (whether hardware or software) still do not support the newer versions.
You can close your eyes to this and find one statistics after another showing differently, but this IS the explanation, whether you want to see it or not.
If you use a DX11 feature only (like someone mentioned renderorder independent transparency), there is no way you can downscale this to DX9, because it does not exist on the latter version.
Why would you use DX11 if you are not going to use its features? Then you may as well stay in DX9 and get the maximum audience.
But thats the thing you can still provide the DX11 features if the hardware supports it, but a company will never do that, as a business there is no reason to invest time and money into getting a subset of features into your engine if you can get away with just supporting the bottom end, unless you are in the business of selling game engines ( Epic, Crytek, etc... ).
As a consumer this annoys me, why shouldnt I have a higher feature set with higher end hardware? This is the same thing when it comes to Console/PC releases, you build your engine, put all the bells and whistles that can run on a high end PC, you showcase it, everyone is wowed by it, go back into the end of production and the features are cut to cater to the lowest common denominator, because you cannot have a different game on PC than on console you are shafted, now the destruction system is dumbed down or whatever cause consoles cannot handle your physics engine.
It also perpetuates the cycle of, lets just not support DX11 hardware. This is my view as a consumer, I know exactly why a business wont and has no need to pump extra money into a product unless they have to.
I am not gonna go into this discussion again, but this is a detail of implementation and has nothing to do with using the same COM object and dropping the directx 9 runtime, furthermore you would never use dx11 order independent transparency, you would be using a deffered renderer which means your pipeline is going to be handling transparency in a whole different way whether its DX9 or DX11.
Tsssk, do we really need to go over this again?? How the HELL do you plan to install DX11 on an XP machine?
Completely irrelevant to my point. Use ANY DX10+ exclusive feature, and you run into this problem. Come on, please address the core of my argument instead of wandering off into meaningless details.
hmm? Go back and read my posts please I have never said you can run DX11 on XP, I actually specifically said you cant, and my proposition is only valid if you only target Win7 users. As a consumer I couldnt give two s***s that someone doesnt have DirectX11 hardware or that they are running a 10 year old OS. Honestly this should answer your question. I dont plan to install DX11 on anyones machine its their problem.
How are those meaningless details I specifically answered your question, again please go back and read through my discussion with Korrigan it already answers your question, you will need a separate implementation if you dabble into any feature that is hardware dependent anything runtime only dependent is handled transparently between DX9 and DX11 if you are running feature level 9. Because DX11/10 exposes a feature that takes advantage of a hardware implementation doesnt mean that is the only way to implement it, its a detail of implementation, compute shaders ( what is used in the case you are talking about order independent transparency ) is not implemented just for that, it is just a low level system that can be used for all kinds of computing if you decide to take advantage of a hardware specification to perform ANY task then you need to take into account that it might not be there for hardware that does not implement it.
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But isn't your argumentation irrelevant to the topic then? Because 45-50% of all PCs do still have XP installed, and no company in their right mind (except it is a very specific business model, like Crysis') would cut out that big a potential audience. And since you cannot install DX11 on these machines, then you are obliged to make a dedicated DX9 version as well, and then the entire backwards compatibility and scaling and whatever will be rendered completely irrelevant.
It is irrelevant what DX11 functionality I use as an example. I picked one, just for argument's sake, it could have been any (I don't develop for DX11, so I don't know the new features). What you do then is proceed on a long explanation why one would not get in problems with that exact functionality, which was completely beside the point. Any use of a dedicated DX11 functionality would create problems if the API has to scale back to DX9.
And if you do not use any dedicated DX11 functionality, then there is little point, as you will dump a large potential audience.
##That seems to be contradicting data, taking Steam surveys as an indicator ( and btw the DX10/11 capabilities listed on the steam hardware survey specifically say DX10/11 Systems (Vista/Win7 + DX10/11 GPU) ) Which means that the 41% DirectX 11 and the 37% DirectX 10 are actually Win7/ Windows Vista users so I dont know where you got the number that 45-50% of all PCs have XP installed, unless you mean ALL PCs in the world, but that would include Microsoft biggest market which are businesses, I dont think ANet cares about ALL PCs but rather, gamer PCs.
## I still dont get what you are trying to get at, that we shouldnt bother with DX11 and just have everything DX9? If you decide to support the directx 9 runtime then when you want to support a higher end feature you still need to implement it yourself, regardless of hardware support, not only that but the runtimes are so different that if you decide to support DirectX 11 for better performance ( if available ) it would be the equivalent of adding OpenGL support to your already DirectX renderer, so if ANet half way through the second expansion of GW2 has the opportunity to add something like Hardware tessellation to improve the graphical quality ( bear in mind this would still be UNSUPPORTED for DirectX 9 GPUs ), this will just be dropped cause adding another API to the engine is probably not gonna be sound business.
If you decide from the start to go DirectX 11, support feature level 9, then there is no difference from a technical point of view ( having a bigger target audience is a business decision ) you will implement exactly everything you would had you just gone with DirectX 9, the difference is your rendering pipeline is now scalable to the complete feature set, so if 2 years from now you decide that you want to support hardware tessellation accross the board for GPUs with feature level 11 then you wont need to write a whole rendering pipeline for what is essentially a new API.
You seem to think I am saying anyone NEEDS to do this, I simply pointed out that this is a possibility, and that it is possible to forfeit using the DirectX 9 runtime altogether for a much better scalable solution which is DirectX 11, granted you dont care about targetting a market that is using XP. You could for instance use the DirectX 11 runtime and NEVER EVER use any of the DirectX 10 or 11 features and still have some runtime benefits, you wouldnt be doing any more work than if you had use DirectX 9 to begin with, just the added benefit of scalability.
Most of the technicals fly right over my head.
If Funcom can provide DX9 and DX11 support, flying by the seat of their pants with obvious budget issues, I have trouble believing that it would be development or cost prohibitive to provide DX9 and DX10 or DX11 support for GW2. Heck, LotRO and Aion, both now F2P, invested in some DX10+ support.
As others have pointed out, the GW2 options select for DX9, which sort of implies that at some point there will be an option to select another version. In TSW, I can either turn DX11 support on or off, why would this not be possible with GW2?
The technical details are really only if interest to people who work with the APIs.
It's not a question of how hard is it, or how expensive is it, MMOs with smaller teams and much smaller budgets can and have offered DX10 or DX11 support. I think most of us are just curious if the game will support DX10 or DX11 and what performance advantages that support might provide for those with appropriate hardware and what visual improvements are typically tageted when game's do support higher than DX9?
That's what I'd be interested in reading comments about from people who know what they are talking about and I think others would like to know as well.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
honestly i think that its time to start weening off the xp crowd. they had ample time to upgrade, and they cant be supported forever.
gw2 sofar only has DX9 and will have dx10 but no dx11 and there is absolutely no reason not to have dx11 supported like TSW does it. everyone knows tesselation + other features look great and if i cant have that because some ppls till run on xp and shitty pcs then this is a horrible solution for GW2.
no matter how u twist or turn it. no dx 11 support is a slap in the face.
## Can you give me a reason then why everybody still supports DX9?
Even when a large number of current gamers can run DX10+, you still do not want to limit your potential audience. And in the potential audience 45-50% have XP installed. Yes, there will be business machines as well, but business machines also run VIsta/7, so who knows what the ratio is?
## The point is: You cannot get around making a dedicated DX9 version just because the new DX can scale back, if you cannot even install the new version on a large number of machines. That means, you do not get around the problem of limiting your potential audience.
This situation where we are still stuck at DX9 is Microsoft's own fault. They wanted to force people to upgrade to Vista by amongst other making DX10 only Vista. Since XP refused to die, this has backfired big time, because game developers cannot ignore the potential market. Many developers have then relied on the baseline DX9, because they could not get around it in any case, and because it is still able to make very impressive graphics, so it is still competitive (due mainly to Shaders, where version 3.0 gives alot of power).
If Microsoft had continued as usual, allowing new DX versions on XP, we would now see all games support DX11.
Have to agree here. The way GW2 looks is touted through all the art, presentation, and all that hard work, what better way to do it even more justice is to display everything in all it's glory. I'd be happy with an option built in at a later date to enable the DX11 features akin to LOTRO.
Why do you care? Its not like you are playing guild wars 2.
Directx 11 doesn't really add anything worthwhile (something to cry about) to gaming. Not even skyrim uses directx 11 at least any of the features of it, it still uses directx9 mainly, so its not really a slap to the face except for people that don't really care about guild wars 2 in the first place and are just bored and trying to troll. Finally, maybe funcom should have spent more time improving the game animation, graphics, combat, skills instead of worry about directx11 a feature that mostt of its target audience wouldn't even care.
And btw, guild wars 2 at release will have directx 10.
Edit: even crysis 2 did bother with directx 11 at release and had to release it as a patch.
Honestly what are you on about I gave you concrete numbers from the Steam hardware survey who has god knows how many million gamers, I would wager most of the PC gaming population has Steam installed on their machine, you pulled some number out of your ass and your telling me they need to support Business machines.
Where is this number coming from, its simply not true, your second point is also a business decision nothing to do with the discussion I was having which was related to the API,and again back to the Steam survey it shows there is a greater majority of gamers on DX10+ than there are on DX9, this is the reason they ANet also probably invested in DX10 because there is a larger market from Vista and up ( considering Win7 also supports DX10 ). The question was never to do with Scale down to DX9 it was always to do with Scale up I honestly cannot believe you are actually truly reading and understand what I am responding to you. On that note I think we have beaten this horse to death, lets just agree to disagree.
My point still stands as a consumer, I would rather pay to have high end tech than to pay to support the 16% of gamers ( Check Steam hardware survey on OS installed ) that still have not upgraded 10 years on, and having a worse gaming experience that I could have had if they supported the high end tech to begin with.
The reason ANet supports DX9 is not because of the API itself, its because of a business person that made the maths and came up with a cutoff point, and currently is more profitable for them to spend time on an older runtime than to let it go, once that cutoff point happens no one will support DX9 anymore it is not because they want everyone to have a better experience or a better game, its just about getting away with not having to invest in high end tech AND supporting a larger market.
This is not to say that you cant make amazing things with DX9, and that you cant make shit games with DX11 if you have shit programmers it doesnt matter if your DX9 or DX11 if you have no technical ability to take advantage of the hardware, but a company like ANet absolutely has the best people in the business, and we are sure missing out on a lot of bells and whistles that could have been there but are not, this goes for pretty much any big company, someone mentioned Skyrim, I bet you they have some pretty impressive tech inhouse that just hasnt been released because they dont have the time or the budget to make it market ready .
Why does it matter so much? Most of the hardware-demanding games out there (shooters) don't support dx11 either. Dx11 does not make a bad game better. (Not saying GW2 is a bad game, but Dx11 is no necessity to have today.)
Also, they (ANet) never said GW2 would support Dx11.
Was a question, curiosity I never said it matters...
Your kidding right LOL...
GW2 uses an updated version of the engine used in GW1 as far as i know.. to code in DX11 was probally too much work..
all i hear is excuses and guesses why they didnt do it.
Do you think people care about DirectX 11 for its own sake? Or do people just want a game to run smoothly and look nice? Various versions of DirectX are only a means to that end, and not an end in themselves.
Maybe because most people don't care about it, like you do?
The bottom line here is that no game ever releases with the BEST it can be, you would have to to go through hundreds of papers and research that comes out every year and it would take and infinitely long time to implement all these features, also people seem to think that there is only improvements to be made in graphics, hardware is now being used for much more than just polygon counts, AI, Physics ( procedural destruction and animations ) are all part of the game pipeline and while graphics are at a stage that its getting diminishing returns in comparison to the time put in developing these features.
There are still TONS of improvements to be made in other areas like animation, physics, AI, and so on, all of these can be implemented taking advantage of better hardware that allows more computations per second more efficiently.
And its the small details that really add to the whole immersion, like a few years ago when people started populating environments with plants and trees you started seeing static meshes everywhere and that added a lot to the immersion, nowadays you have things like Speedtree that allow up to every single leave to be physically simulated, with leaves falling off the tree when you hit it and animated grass that interacts with your character when you go through it, when you swing at a wall and you chip a bit of it, or when your character can dynamically grap onto anything in the geometry and climb up a wall or any other object.
These details by themselves are pretty insignificant but when you add them all together it truly adds to a great experience. New hardware and API give you tools that allow you to create and add all of these details much faster and more efficiently.